If Devin Mesoraco wrote his autobiography this year, the title should be, 'The Catcher Who Couldn't Crouch.'
While there are stand-up comedians everywhere, a stand-up catcher wouldn't be very funny to the home plate umpire.
The grand plan this spring by Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price was to have Mesoraco catch 135 to 140 games this season, especially after the young catcher's breakout offensive season in 2014.
What is it they say -- Man makes plans and God laughs at them? Somewhere along the way this spring, Mesoraco's hip began hurting and he doesn't recall any specific event that brought it on. But it was diagnosed as a hip impingement, which prevents him squatting behind the plate.
He caught the first week of the season, the first six games, but hasn't put on the mask since April 14.
So, no catching. The Reds, though, kept him on the roster to pinch-hit instead of placing him on the disabled list, hoping treatment and medication would alleviate the hip problem and avoid surgery.
That didn't work well at first and as Mesoraco said, "I think I went a month without getting a hit," and his batting average was close to his body temperature at .103.
That changed over the weekend when Mesoraco hit a pinch-hit, run-scoring triple off the top of the wall in Chicago against the White Sox. He followed that up Tuesday night with a pinch-hit, first-pitch game-winning double against Atlanta in the bottom of the ninth, "My first walk-off hit in my career," he said.
Manager Bryan Price is content to have Mesoraco at arm's reach in the dugout, ready to pinch-hit until his hip makes up its mind.
"This is something he can do along the way," said Price. "Nobody anticipated when he was first injured that we would be here, at this point, with him not catching. We all anticipated it to be a much shorter time for him to be back catching.
"We kept saying another three days, another nine days, and I'm sure it falls on deaf ears right now," Price added. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that he has come up with some nice at-bats in the last couple of days. He is finding a way to help us."
Price gave a wry smile and said, "Hey, he is taking some balls off the bat (during batting practice) in the outfield, too. Doesn't mean he'll play in the outfield, but you never know that in a pinch when we need somebody to go out there. . .it might be Devin Mesoraco, you never know."
There has been some discussion about Mesoraco playing another position, maybe first base, like San Francisco catcher Buster Posey or Milwaukee catcher Jonathan Lucroy.
When that discussion came up Tuesday night in front of Mesoraco's locker, a first base discussion, first baseman Joey Votto was walking by and overheard it. He kept walking, but looked over his shoulder and say, "Hey, Devin, hey, hey, hey. No, no, no."
Mesoraco said he acquired a fielder's mitt recently and planned to do some outfield shagging, adding that he thought mastering first base would take too much work and too much time.
"I recently got an outfield mitt," he said. "In an emergency situation if I had to go out there I feel I could go out there. I would need a whole lot of work to be able to play out there. Maybe not in the near future, but maybe at some point that might be something we might explore.
"I need a lot of work, though," he added. "A lot of it depends upon my health. If I'm feeling better, as I have recently in the last week or so, then maybe we'll explore it a little bit more. I think I'm always going to be a catcher, that's the most important thing. But you want to be like Buster Posey and Jonathan Lucroy. I feel I'm athletic enough to go out there maybe once a week.
"In the future we'll explore that, but my goal right now is to be healthy enough to catch," he said. "We're getting closer to that point than what we have any point up to now. I'm optimistic. Some of the stuff we've recently tried has really helped. This is the best I've felt. If you asked me a week ago, two weeks ago, I wouldn't have brought it up. But we're getting close."
